Here are my thoughts on music in the rest of the Academy Award-nominated movies I've seen. Don't look too hard for a thesis, since these are just free-flowing reflections.
Hybrids: The Great Gatsby, 12 Years a Slave
I've called these two hybrids for the lack of a better word: both of them take a variety of musical approaches, none in particular being dominant. 12 Years a Slave has a score by Hans Zimmer and Gatsby has one by Craig Armstrong, but the scores of these two films are the least important aspects of their varied music.
Gatsby's compendium of music has been commented on by many since the film's release, with most critics falling into one of two camps: either the use of current African-American music is a very astute method to help the modern audience understand the excess of the 1920s, or it is a terrible symptom of the dumbing-down of the audience, implying that they would find authentic 1920s jazz so repugnant that they would stay away from the cinema. Scoring the movie with Jay-Z (who also produced) and a host of other contemporary rap, hip-hop, and R&B singers is a good way to make a link between the 20s and the present, but there is actually more at stake here than Luhrmann has been given credit for. It is easy to overlook the most interesting musical connection between the 1920s and now, which is the fact that in the 1920s as in the 2010s the most popular music among white listeners was coded as Black. This is something that Baz Luhrmann captures very well in the film, though it may have been a happy accident: even though we hear quite a lot of so-called 'Black' music we very rarely see Blacks on the screen, and when they are present they only appear in quick vignettes in bit parts. This demonstrates the fetishisation of black-ness among Whites: in the '20s, and probably in the present as well, one could argue that the popularity of African-American music among Whites was a smokescreen to hide oppression. White listeners use their approval of black music as a synecdoche for their approval of Blacks in general, assuming that because they say the music is so good they can get away with forcing Blacks to be subalterns (happy to have them perform on stage, but if they want to listen they'd better sit in the balcony). (My use of 'Black' rather than 'African-American' in regard to the 1920s is to avoid anachronism, though of course Whites in the 1920s were more likely to use 'Negro'.) At the same time, it probably would have been nice to hear more non-anachronistic music in the film, but if it had all been 'authentic' it wouldn't really have been a 'Baz Luhrmann' film. I'm a fan of Luhrmann and I think he manages to bring all of the music together with the images, providing a compelling case against historical authenticity. After all, you can't repeat the past. It will be interesting to see how well the film will have held up twenty years from now, when the current trendy music will be old-fashioned; using Bert Bacharach in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was cutting-edge at the time but now seems extremely silly. On an unrelated note, Luhrmann also provides Leonardo DiCaprio with the most exciting 'star entrance' since John Ford's introduction of John Wayne in Stagecoach.
I struggled mightily with the music of 12 Years a Slave; the score came very close to ruining the film for me. In addition to being nearly identical to Zimmer's score for The Thin Red Line, the score here is very intrusive, my pet peeve when it comes to film music. To put it succinctly, every time I heard the main theme I felt resentment for being told what to think about what I was seeing on screen. The other aspects of the film, including its sonic ones, are such a great achievement that having this pushy score frequently barge in is shockingly inept on the part of a director as gifted as Steve McQueen seems to be. This score exists out of fear, fear that the audience won't be able to 'handle' the tough questions the film asks, and fear that the screenplay and acting can't carry the audience through them. Without the music to direct our emotions in a conventional way (using culturally-ingrained tropes of musicalised sadness like downward motion, long slow tones, string instruments in harmony: the model is clearly the Barber 'Adagio') McQueen and Zimmer imply that the scenes of emotional suffering in the film would be more difficult to watch. That difficulty, however, should be the point! The score in this film is a balm, and I agree with Bertolt Brecht in feeling that music should not be used as such. Music is too powerful a medium to be used in such a simplistic way, the way that TW Adorno disdainfully called emotional listening. Because of its simplistic use of those emotional tropes, Zimmer's music encourages this type of listening. McQueen's professed desire is to make his audience think, but the poor use of music allows us to stop thinking and start merely feeling. There is a rather interesting paradox here: McQueen's goal is Brechtian: he wants to make the audience angry and inspire social change. But his directorial technique is grounded in Stanislavsky, not Brecht: emotional identification versus enforced alienation. The score, though, evoked in me a Brechtian response: in addition to the anger felt at being manipulated, it took me out of the film. For a viewer who doesn't care a fig for Brecht or Adorno the score would intensify the emotional identification because of the tropes to which it makes recourse, but at the same time it focusses attention away from what is happening on screen by acting as a balm. So does McQueen want us to identify or not? Can you be involved and alienated at the same time? Did McQueen hire Zimmer on purpose to annoy people like me? It's all especially annoying because the best single musical scene out of all of these films appears in this one. When Solomon, sold into slavery, attends the funeral of a fellow slave and the others start singing the spiritual 'Roll, Jordan, Roll', McQueen and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor do an extraordinary job of showing the divide between Solomon and the other slaves: Solomon, having grown up in the North, doesn't know the spiritual, and as he slowly begins to sing along, the tension he feels between his desire to regain his family and his feelings for his fellow slaves is palpable in Ejiofor's performance. McQueen shows this all in one long take, allowing us to see the character's entire emotional trajectory. It's an amazing tour-de-force of acting and directing.
Musicals: Inside Llewyn Davis, Frozen
By 'musical' here I simply mean a movie in which the characters break into song. Frozen is a traditional musical in that it employs what musicologist Raymond Knapp calls MERM (musically-enhanced reality mode), while Inside Llewyn Davis is about a musician whom we often see perform, alone and with others. The music of ILD was produced by T Bone Burnett, who also coordinated the music for the Coen brothers' two other musically-inspired films O Brother Where Art Thou and The Ladykillers. O Brother foregrounds musicking and sparked a major revival in 'roots' music in the United States, while The Ladykillers intelligently plays with classical/folk divide (though this is the only way in which the remake improves upon the British original). In ILD, however, the focus is squarely on the music. It is almost a work of musicology-as-film: it is a well-researched treatise on the 1960s folk music movement, the artist's place in society, shifting musical cultures and styles, and the music industry. It also highlights the need for an Oscar (or any award, for that matter) for music supervision: T Bone Burnett's work here and Randall Poster's for The Wolf of Wall Street, among other supervisors' work for other films, have not been given their due, though they contribute to the films just as much as editing, sound design, sets, or costumes. There used to be an award for Adaptation Score that could be transformed into such an award. (It was used mostly for musicals that were adapted from the stage; for example, André Previn won it for his work on My Fair Lady. Marvin Hamlisch won it for his adaptation of Scott Joplin for The Sting.) Burnett's work on ILD definitely fits into this category, as he took folk songs from the 1960s and worked with the actors to create idiomatic performances. The use of music in the film doesn't need much exegesis since it provides its own with astonishing perspicacity. Can a work of art be a doctoral thesis on itself?
The music and lyrics for Frozen aren't all that good (though I do quite like the 'frozen fractals all around'), but they work very well within the film and unlike the other recent Disney musicals like The Princess and the Frog and Tangled they sometimes develop plot rather than being merely parenthetical. 'Do You Wanna Build a Snowman' does this particularly well through careful orchestration and vocal arrangements to display the disintegrating relationship between the two sisters across their childhood. The influence of Wicked is everywhere, and that influence is usually negative, entailing songs that depend on simple modulations and high belted notes rather than intelligent lyrics and interesting harmonic development, as well of course as the plot that was lifted bodily from the musical to the movie. Even more interesting from a musicological perspective is the way in which people have taken ownership of the score, especially 'Let It Go', making their own YouTube videos singing the original lyrics and adapted ones. What's most surprising is that Disney not only has allowed this to happen without lawsuits, but has even encouraged it by including backing tracks on the soundtrack album for singing along. Perhaps this litigious company is opening up? Or do they just want people to buy the album so they can get the backing tracks? The iTunes version also has karaoke versions of the other songs, but they haven't caught on as well (my favourite is 'Love Is an Open Door' but I can't find anyone to sing it with me). A word here should also be said about the 'pop' version of 'Let It Go' that plays over the end credits. The editing of the vocal line on this track is extraordinarily bad; it sounds like each syllable was spliced together from different takes, the pitch correction settings went haywire at the end of phrases, the melismas at the end were performed by a vocoder, and some door creaks were added in at random. It's all very strange indeed, and if spread around a room could pass for a cubist sound installation. Perhaps Demi Lovato is a Braque fan and it was all done on purpose.
I could go on even longer about all of these films, especially if I saw them all a second time, but that's more than enough for now. If anyone is still reading, feel free to add comments. Let's get some arguments going.
Hi Dr. Camp.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. There should be more of this kind of stuff on the internet. Keep them coming!
Of the films discussed, I have only seen ’12 Years a Slave’. I watched the film, not particularly thinking about the music and how it was used – at least, not to the degree that you have. Or perhaps, I didn’t make a point of thinking about the music throughout the film. However, I will pick out something you have written and respond to it. Or, sort of loosely respond to it.
"For a viewer who doesn't care a fig for Brecht or Adorno the score would intensify the emotional identification because of the tropes to which it makes recourse, but at the same time it focusses attention away from what is happening on screen by acting as a balm."
Personally, I know nothing of Brecht or Adorno. (I guess I should look back at your past blog posts for more information about these.) But as I watched the funeral scene, I was very aware of what the director was trying to do, and the response he was trying to get from the audience. I wasn’t sure whether this was because I had seen similar things done before in other films. I thought maybe this was why it [the scene] didn’t have the effect on me that I know the director wanted it to have. Something, for me, made it not as effective as I think the director had intended. But in the whole film, this was the scene that I found brought me closest to tears (and I know, the film is full of brutality, and things that should bring the audience to tears simply because of the anger at seeing such unjust acts being carried out.)
Yet, as I was nearly brought to tears watching the funeral scene, I recall thinking to myself ‘Isn’t it remarkable how, while there has been so much violence, it is the scene in which music is used so obviously, and the scene in which the sole focus (or at least the main focus) is on the music that is the one that makes me want to cry’. Basically, it made me think about the power that music does have on us. And the fact that so much can be said through music – even music with lyrics – that cannot be said through dialogue or through written text.
Given more time, I could write a much longer response to your post. But I shall not indulge myself at the moment.
Hello, thanks for your comments!
DeleteI had the same reaction to the scene (being moved to tears while also being very aware of what the director was up to), and I think the reaction is in itself very interesting. I wonder if it might have something to do with the supposed ineffability of music, the idea that what music says is indescribable and that it can't be 'pinned down'. There's an impenetrable book on the subject by Vladimir Jankélévich (translated by Carolyn Abbate, who draws from many of his ideas in her own work). It's an idea of music that I disagree with quite strongly; for me, music is extremely 'effable' because of the strong reactions it creates in us: music is all about bodies and physicality, leading both to emotion and motion. Even if we can't explain everything about it with words we do explain it with our own senses, which is even stronger because it is music operating as a sign-system without the usual translation into language. I think that to say that it is ineffable is an old Enlightenment ploy to denigrate bodily reactions such as tears (this is a massive generalisation, but the Enlightenment was all about thinking, not so much about feeling). Ineffability is a tricky concept because it is so full of contradictions.
Where I think I'm going with this is that it seems McQueen shares the idea that music is indeed ineffable, and he wanted to show that ineffability in the scene (Solomon as driven by the higher power of music to identify with his fellow slaves), but it backfired slightly because music's 'effability' was demonstrated by our own physical reactions. But I still think it's a pretty good scene.